Thrawn's Revenge II: Ascendancy is a total conversion set in the Star Wars galaxy after the Original Trilogy. The first release will feature the New Republic and Imperial Remnant, with more factions coming after that. For more information, see the mod's wiki.

...Ascendancy 0.9 Release...

The Emperor has fallen, and the Empire is in shambles after their defeat at Endor. Can the Rebel Alliance, now reformed as the fledgling New Republic, re-establish the traditions of the old Republic and restore peace or will the Empire manage to unite under a strong leader to once again impose order over a lawless galaxy?

...Features of Ascendancy 0.95...Play as the New Republic or Imperial Remnant, each with unique ship rosters, abilities, playstyles and tech trees.Conquer the Star Wars Galaxy on several new maps with various configurations, featuring several new planet types and canon planet placements.Completely redesigned UI, and overhauled graphical effects.Several overhauled and all-new gameplay mechanics, ship systems degrading with damage, and the ability to entirely destroy planets.

For a full new-user guide (don't expect to do everything the same as in Sins) and more in depth information on ship rosters, see the wiki. There's still a ton of information we're working on adding, so it'll become more useful as we go. We also have a board to help people who want to play Ascendancy online to organize games with other players, which you can find here. Keep in mind, this is a beta version and the primary purpose of it is to test features, tweak as needed and to help with balancing (which is currently still very much in progress) so please post any issues you encounter, suggestions, or feedback you may have on our forums.

Before playing the mod to increase stability, also enable Large Address Aware to bypass Sins' 2GB memory limit issues. LAA is included in the download, simply open it, set the mode to basic, find your Sins of a Solar Empire Rebellion.exe file and click the box to enable large address aware, then save. This only needs to be done once, so if you have already done it for other mods you can skip this step.

1.0 is going to ship with 2 new factions, being the Empire of the Hand which everyone knew, and the Pentastar Alignment which several people guessed. We always said we wouldn't do the Pentastar Alignment in Ascendancy unless we were able to ensure they weren't just the Remnant with a few different units, despite the pretty significant demand for them. While working on them for Imperial Civil War I was able to track down enough unique Imperial and Republic holdovers to fit them, while also contributing to a unique playstyle to make them worth the faction slot, so here they are. This also entails a few changes to the Remnant which are explained below.

...History...

"The New Republic is still merely the Rebellion, thinly disguised as an official entity. They are outlaws, and they will continue to think and do as such. In the Pentastar Alignment, there will be no tolerance for any Rebel insurrection." - Ardus Kaine

The Pentastar Alignment is one of the many groups which the Empire fractured into after Palpatine's death, and it would prove to be one of the most resilient and powerful. It was established from Bastion in the New Territories by Grand Moff Ardus Kaine four years after the Battle of Yavin, whose political leadership, although not unchallenged, provided a far more stable alternative to that based on Coruscant. When Palpatine returned to temporarily unite Imperial forces against the New Republic, the Pentastar Alignment ran an initially highly successful campaign into the core, although this success proved short lived as both Palpatine and Kaine were ultimately killed in the conflict. After their deaths the Alignment once again returned to isolation from other Imperial groups, until it was formally annexed into Natasi Daala and Gilad Pellaeon's reunited Empire in 12 ABY. The impact of the Alignment on this new Empire was still quite strong, as Kaine's flagship, the Reaper, became the Imperial flagship under Pellaeon until its destruction at the Battle of Celanon. Bastion also became the new Imperial capital, and the Alignment territory was among the last remaining to the Empire by the time it finally made peace with the New Republic in 19ABY and later joined as a member state of the Galactic Alliance against the invading Yuuzhan Vong armada.

In trying to make these two factions have different playstyles and feels, we've essentially tried to emphasize two different aspects of the Empire militarily, which is shown by the unit lists. With the Imperial Remnant, we've shifted more towards the Dark Empire style with a higher emphasis on the titans and superweapons, like the World Devastator and using other ships as support for those. With the Pentastar Alignment, we've focused more on the power being with the fleet itself, with a strong emphasis on fighter support and the strength in numbers philosophy.

Culturally and economically, both will still have a similar Imperial oppression style, however the Remnant will have the techs that open the faction more diplomatically, which the Alignment does not. The Alignment has more of a focus on the economic side, getting access to trade earlier and more easily, and with less emphasis on taxation as the primary income source.

hi, so i just read that ironclad/stardock just put up what they call their last change to the basic game.... so are all the mods screwed now til you awesome mod makers can update your mods to their changes? I certainly hope not. but i had to ask anyways.

I haven't seen anything about a new patch, but whether or not that breaks mods depends on the content. Most balancing patches just requires renaming the mods folder and everything works fine. Stuff like DLC can entirely break mods and requires significant reworking.

Actually, this is incorrect; the Empire of the Hand and the Chiss Ascendancy are not the same thing, and we've never planned to addd the Chiss Ascendancy.

EotH is 1.0. We started with the NR/IR because for the vast, vast majority of SW fans (and thereby people we'd want to ease in), those are the two most recognizable factions. They're also the factions that required the least to complete,. since we didn't need to redesign or rework significant portions of their content like we do with the Hand.

I realize they are not the same, believe me. The EOH uses Chiss hardware like the Ascendancy's Chiss Star Destroyers, I was suggesting the EOH hardware was Chiss.

Also as I asked previously do you plan on having the Empire of the Hand in v1? I am not asking you for a date, I just want to know if v1 of Thrawns revenge will actually have any of Thrawn's EOH units?

It's dangerous to confuse Thrawn's Empire of the Hand with the Chiss Ascendancy. The Empire of the Hand was founded from Household Phalanx, which was branded traitors, along with Thrawn. Thrawn and his empire disregarded a large portion of the regular Ascendancy policies.